On November 3, Pope Benedict XVI presided at an annual Mass for the bishops who have died in the past year, and remarked in his homily that only in Christ does the world find hope for triumph over death and evil.

As we remember the deceased in prayer, the Pope said, “we are always surprised and overwhelmed by a God Who came so close to us as not to pause even before the abyss of death.” In the Sacrifice of Christ, he said, “The abyss of death is filled with another even greater abyss, the love of God.”

Pope Benedict said in his homily that the entire world was changed forever in the course of the three days between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. He explained:

Without the Cross of Christ, all the energy of nature is impotent before the negative force of sin. A beneficial power greater than that which commands the cycles of nature is needed, a Good greater than that of creation itself: a Love which proceeds from God’s very heart and which, while revealing the ultimate meaning of creation, renews it and orients it towards its original and ultimate goal.